Social networks profile mapping using games

Abstract

Mapping user profiles across social network sites enables sharing and interactions between social networks, which enriches the social networking experience. Manual map-ping for user profiles is a time consuming and tedious task. In addition profile mapping algorithms are inaccu-rate and are usually based on simple name or email string matching. In this paper, we propose a Game With A Purpose (GWAP) approach to solve the profile mapping problem. The proposed approach leverages the game ap-peal and social community to generate the profile map-pings. We designed and implemented an online social networking game (GameMapping), the game is fun and is based on human verification. The game presents the players with some profiles information, and uses human computation and knowledge about the information be-ing presented to map similar user profiles. The game was modeled using incomplete information game the-ory, and a proof of sequential equilibrium was provided. To test the effectiveness of the mapping technique and detection strategies, the game was implemented and de-ployed on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and the ex-periments were performed on the real data collected from users playing the game. 1